29 December 2011 11:38 AM

Tackling truancy is not just a school's responsibility: it is everyone's problem

A record number of parents have criminal records for allowing their children to skip school.

More than 9,000 were convicted last year, marking a threefold increase in nine years.

We have to first look at why children truant before deciding what to do about it. They can roughly be divided into two groups with different problems and different solutions.

Firstly, the middle classes who have a sneering attitude to authority. They allow their kids time off school for excuses such as busy weekends; too much sport; the au pair couldn’t get him there and feigned illness because the child doesn’t like that day’s lessons. There are the parents who drop their kids at school when it suits them rather than at the stipulated time, and those who justify homework not being completed because it is too hard to argue with their offspring. My children attended middle class schools and I saw these attitudes and continue to see them in my friends and extended family.

Then there are the ‘problem families’ and the single parents. Usually young girls who cannot cope as they are little more than children themselves when they became mothers. The father, usually unemployed and coming from generations of unemployed benefit claimants, where the state has rendered these lads little more than sperm banks, are nowhere to be seen. I have spent considerable time visiting schools, Sure Start centres and speaking to social workers about the problem of truancy in these families.

When we asked the mothers why their children didn’t attend school the answer was generally that they couldn’t cope; get out of bed; they didn’t go to school so didn’t see the value in education and often they were lonely at home so they kept the kids with them.

One mother told me that she had four children under seven and it was usually the seven-year-old who changed the baby’s nappy, made up the bottle of milk and fed it to the baby while the mother was in bed depressed and unable to cope. It was the education welfare officers employed by the school who took the child to school.

At one Sure Start centre there was a stark contrast in the attendees. Some were immigrant Polish and Albanian women with few children. They told me they were there to learn English and to integrate and were proud that their older children were in school - grateful for the educational opportunities.

The single teenage mothers said they were made to come to Sure Start by their social workers. We discussed how many children they had and whether their kids attended school on a regular basis. The answers were consistent – I can’t cope; I didn’t go to school; my mum didn’t make me go to school; I don’t have a partner to help (often their children had different biological fathers and were unemployed). There is a pattern here.

One morning during term time I was invited out on a ‘truant sweep’ by the police as I had been criticising the numbers of truant children. Walking down the high street with the police (and their media officer!), the officers were stopping mothers with children who were questioned about the reasons for them being absent from school. Three boys who were clearly of secondary school age turned to quickly walk away when they spotted the police.

The police apprehended one who was asked for his parents’ details. I heard the police officer say, 'I won’t drag him back because of public perception'. When asked to explain what was meant by this comment, it was explained that it was more important to trust the boy's honesty in providing the correct information - rather than check it or send him home - because it would send the wrong message to the people on the street. Public perception is important as a visible police presence on the streets.

I told the media officer she had a media crisis on her hands. She immediately had a word with the officers who radioed ahead to a colleague who then apprehended the other kids.

I find this astonishing that the police and the council have taken the time and allocated personnel to deal with this problem but did not at first try apprehend all of the boys. This gives a clear message to those children that even if they are playing truant (and they were by their own admission) the police will do nothing. The police were going to rely on the parents and the school to handle the problem.

Truancy is due to an increasing lack of moral fibre across all classes.

Fining truant children of teenage single mothers who cannot pay is a waste of time. Sending them to prison is a waste of time; it is more of a burden to society and will cost the taxpayer more. They need to be encouraged to not have children at an early age; to learn it is unacceptable to live off the state and have children by different fathers and to choose not to live with them. This is a much larger debate and it will take a generation to change this. Let’s hope that Gove and Duncan Smith have the courage to see through their education and welfare reforms without being hampered by the Lib Dems.

The middle classes do not fear fines but they fear prison. There is a big morale decline in the middle-classes who sneer at values. They have been brain-washed by the Labour years who gave them state hand-outs rather than tax breaks and are unfortunate products of a left-dominated education system, unless they were lucky enough to have gone to public school.

Whilst the political classes slog it out with withdrawal of benefits/prison/fines/etc there are a number of measures parents with moral fibre could take who find themselves in charge of a recalcitrant teenager:

Turn off the electricity in the house so the kids cannot access the computer or TV or easier still, remove the plugs. Confiscate their mobile phones so they cannot communicate with their friends. Do not give them money so if you ground them they will not abscond if they don’t have access to a phone or Facebook. Empty the fridge too and watch Kevin the Teenager turn into a more docile and amenable creature.

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JANICE ATKINSON-SMALL

Janice is a director of a new, centre-right think tank, WomenOn ... which seeks to challenge the left dominated Guardianista feminist view of the world of women which does not represent ordinary women. Women On … researches the issues facing women today, and promotes ideas and policies which enable all women to reach their full potential – economically, socially, culturally and politically, but not at the expense of men.
In politics she was the director of Conservative Action for Electoral Reform (but did not support AV) and had provided communications for MPs, MEPs and campaign groups. She stood for the Conservative Party in the 2010 General Election in Batley and Spen but is now a member of UKIP.
Prior to becoming involved in politics, Janice ran her own successful marketing communications business. She is divorced with two teenage sons and is about to re-marry.
www.womenon.org